


Rooftop Sneaking

by ivy



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivy/pseuds/ivy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A queen ought to be able to get around her palace unseen. Sneaking lessons from the finest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rooftop Sneaking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morganstern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganstern/gifts).



Eddis squinted up at the roof of the palace. Night had fallen, and the walls were a mass of shadow. She could see the bump of a shape that was Eugenides, scaled halfway up the wall and silhouetted against the lighter sky. He was waiting, a little impatiently, but she couldn't make out his expression.

A little gingerly, because there was not an insubstantial drop to the ground, Eddies carefully put herself through the window. It was a tall, wide window, built to take in the mountain views, and more importantly, had a wide ledge to stand on. She turned around to face the wall and tried not to look down. She reminded herself that she had agreed to this idea because it had merits, namely that it would let her meet in the dead of the night with whomever she liked, secretly, without one spymaster or another knowing. She hoped. 

"There's a bit that sticks out on your left," said Eugenides, from above. "You can put your foot on it."

And where would she put her hands? She settled for grabbing the ornamental stonework that extended across the top of the window, and carefully transferred her weight off the ledge. Now that she thought about it, it was probably just as well it was so dark. Not only would no one see her if she broke her neck, she didn't have to terrify herself looking down; the yard of the palace was invisible in the gloom. She wondered how Eugenides closed the window, but it was too late for her to do it.

The next handholds were indents in the stone, and as she climbed up she realized that they had been put there on purpose, chisled into the stone for the express purpose of climbing up and down the walls of the palace in the dark. She wondered how many little divots there were all over her palace, and how long they'd been there. The thought was a little disquieting, though the Thief's role had always been well-defined to the monarchy. Eddis must come first.

Feeling her way up with caution, she joined Eugenides on the roof. The palace spread out before her in dark tiles and occasional chimneys. She glanced around in fascination, wishing the moon was out so she could see better.

"Your quarters are this way," said Eugenides, pointing. The lower roof they stood on was slightly canted, but he dropped suddenly into a crouch and she followed; there was a circuit of lookout posts on the uppermost palace roof patrolled regularly. They both waited, silent, until they heard and then saw the dark shape of a guard passing by. Whoever it was paused just above them, and Eddis almost stopped breathing. It was partly the instinct of a child, hiding behind the curtain to launch a surprise, and partly that she had no desire for talk to go round the court that she was scrambling on the walls of the palace. It would completely negate this exercise, for one. All the spies she harboured from Sounis and Attolia would whisper back to their masters, though on second reflection she thought that might not be such a bad thing. Perhaps they'd think her more desperate this way. Then the guard moved on, and Eugenides got up. "There won't be someone along for another ten minutes," he said under his breath. 

"This seems just as likely to get me caught as walking around the inside of the palace," Eddis muttered. Fortunately the tiles were not too slippery and she felt almost safe standing up. 

"It works better when there isn't a war on and all the soldiers left here doing extra patrols." 

That would be the doing of Gen's father, concerned that Attolia or Sounis would send an assassin. She'd given in, since she couldn't deny there was the possibility, however faint, of an assassin showing up. Mostly, though, trying to dissuade either Gen or his father was like pushing a very large boulder uphill--only useful when you really wanted that boulder up there. 

They stuck to the lower ring of rooftops, which gave them a little bit of cover. The true roof was higher than her head and had a low paraphet, for the benefit of the courtiers who came up to stroll the rooftop during the day. Tonight there was no one, not even a restless sleeper up for the night air. She wondered if that was why Eugenides liked the rooftop so much. 

"You don't just creep around the roof, do you?" said Eddis.

"There's other passages inside," he said vaguely. "You already know about all the ones that lead from your room, and they don't connect very well to the other passages."

There were several, actually, and nearly all of them led to various escape holes. One led down to the ground floor on the rear side of the palace, connecting to a small door carefully landscaped to look unused, though the door itself was well-maintained from the inside. Another led to the stables via an underground connection. A third went to the kitchens, though Eddis wasn't sure if that exit was an escape rout, or merely for the convenience of a hungry monarch. Really, it was a wonder that the walls of her quarters didn't bulge with all the secret passages. Probably one of the Thieves of old had helped the architect--or had been the architect himself, like the Thief who had designed Attolia's palace. She felt a stab of worry at the problem of Attolia and pushed it aside. 

They skirted the south side of the palace and came round to where Eugenides said her rooms were. It looked just about the same as every other part of the roof to her, but she carefully fixed the route in her mind--down along the south wall, a quarter of the way up from the east wall, and then a drop down to the library window. She turned her attention to the problem of getting down, and started worrying.

"How do you get down?"

She caught the flash of a grin as Eugenides crouched at the end of the roof and, bracing a hand and a hook onto the edge, dropped the rest of his body down so that he was hanging by the roof alone. From what she could see, Eugenides didn't look concerned; he looked like he had done this many times, casually, but she couldn't help worrying about his hook, and whether he had enough grip in the other hand if it came off. The Thieves were not trained for caution, and Eugenides was as reckless as the worst of them. That much had been demonstrated to her, painfully, this past year. There was a moment which she assumed he was looking for a foothold, and then he vanished.

"Eugenides!"

"It's fine, I'm under the lip of the roof," he called back. 

That was a relief. She copied his pose, but immediately she wished she'd taken the time to look down and see what was underneath the roof. She could have lain flat on the tiles and seen what was coming at least. Next time she would look before she leapt. She clutched the tiles--which no longer felt nearly as stable as she'd thought--and carefully lowered the rest of herself down. Kicking around a bit, gently so she didn't fling herself off, she found there was some sort of stone thing under her foot--

"Step there, but don't let go. There's a brick for your other foot, if you put your weight down a little more--" She found it. But she couldn't let go of the roof. It felt like it was the only thing keeping her attached to the palace, and she was dizzyingly aware of the drop below her. It was an extraordinarily precarious position and she wondered how again she had talked herself into it. Even as a girl, though she'd like horseriding and races and swordplay, she'd never been a tree climber. Like Eugenides in a way, really. This would be useful, she reminded herself. And she had thrown herself into situations just like this and come out the other side mostly unscathed, even after she'd become queen.

"There's a handhold further down, but you'll have to duck your head. It's on the wall." She reached out blindly, hoping that there was a balcony underneath in case she did actually fall--something that seemed quite likely at the moment--and discovered to her relief that there was one, a rough face of stone that gave her fingers some purchase. 

That was the worst part over. The rest of the way was easy enough; like the wall outside the library, it had been carefully cut to make stepping places.

There was a muffled click. Once she had climbed level to the window, she saw that Eugenides had managed to open a window that opened into one of her sitting rooms, which she had never seen open and for that matter had thought was unopenable. He was standing inside, brushing invisible dust off his sleeves. Her sitting room was completely dark; she had sent her attendants away earlier this evening to go talk to Eugenides and his father. He turned to her with almost a grin. "There, that wasn't so hard, was it?" 

She gave him a look, and went inside to recover.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy yuletide, morganstern! 
> 
> With innumerable thanks to false_alexis, who really saved my bacon. Thank you so much!


End file.
